How to Read the Bottleneck Tile in EDGEBIC

The Bottleneck tile on the EDGEBIC by User Solutions dashboard names the constraint work center and marks it with a Focus Area badge, so everyone reading the board is looking at the same station. A plant has one pace-setter. This tile is where you check that the software, the supervisor, and the plan all agree on which one it is.

For the wider board, see how to use the EDGEBIC dashboard tabs. Every task in this library is mapped on the EDGEBIC how-to hub.

Before You Start

• Jobs are scheduled, because load figures come from the plan.
• Work centers carry shifts and calendars, because a constraint is only meaningful against real available hours.
• One work center is flagged as the bottleneck, or the tile will show a dash. See how to flag a work center as a bottleneck.

Step 1: Find the Tile

Open Dashboard from the main navigation and stay on the CAPACITY tab. The Bottleneck tile sits with the hero KPI tiles, carrying the constraint's name and the Focus Area badge.

Click Refresh now first if the board has been open a while, since the cockpit tabs hold their snapshot until you ask for a new one.

Step 2: Read What the Tile Is Actually Reporting

The tile reports the flagged bottleneck, or the highest-utilization work center when nothing is flagged. That distinction matters more than it looks.

A dash is not an error. It is an honest statement that the constraint has not been declared, and it is worth fixing, because Theory of Constraints only helps a plant that has agreed what its constraint is.

Step 3: See the Same Constraint on the Other Boards

The constraint is named to three audiences on three tabs, and they should agree:

1. CAPACITY, the working default, carries the tile and the Focus Area badge.
2. STANDUP, the dark floor board for the morning meeting, carries a Bottleneck card beside the Andon strip and the late-job punch list. See how to use the standup dashboard.
3. PLANNER carries a bottleneck and buffer panel alongside schedule adherence, attainment and the 14-day load heatmap. See how to use the planner dashboard.

When the supervisor's board and the planner's board name different stations, the flag was moved and one board has not been refreshed.

Step 4: Confirm the Constraint in the Report Layer

The tile names the station. The report proves it. Open Reports and click the 📊 Work Center Utilization tile in the Diagnostics group, then read the Per Work Center tab, which carries a utilization rating and a bottleneck label for every station.

The rating bands are published, which is what makes the report quotable:

See how to run the work center utilization report. This report is the authority on capacity because its available hours are computed from the real shift calendars and any per-day overrides.

Step 5: Use the Tile as a Filter for Everything Else

Once the constraint is named, it changes how you read the rest of the board. Two jobs at risk on a station with slack are two small problems. Two jobs at risk queueing on the constraint are one large one, and clearing the sequence there often fixes both.

Practical uses in a single morning:

• Check whether at-risk jobs touch the constraint before choosing which to rescue. See how to find at-risk jobs on the dashboard.
• Check whether the plant's heaviest jobs land on the constraint, using the top jobs ranking in the utilization report.
• Protect the constraint's day before you protect anything else, because an hour lost there is an hour lost by the plant.

A Worked Example

A plant flags its five-axis mill as the bottleneck because it is the most expensive machine on the floor. For two months the tile names the mill, the standup card names the mill, and deliveries keep slipping anyway.

Then someone runs the utilization report over a full quarter. The mill averages 71%, which is GOOD. The heat treat oven averages 103%, which is CRITICAL, and it is CRITICAL in nine weeks out of thirteen. Every late job in the punch list passes through it.

The flag moves to the oven. The tile now names the oven, the standup card names the oven, and the morning meeting stops arguing about the mill. The plant does not gain an hour of capacity from the change, but it starts protecting the right station: the oven's day is planned first, its overtime is approved first, and jobs are sequenced to keep it fed.

The tile did not find the constraint. The report did. What the tile did was make the decision visible to everyone who reads a board.

What Changes When You Read It

Nothing. The tile is read-only, and so is every panel that names the constraint. Flagging a work center as the bottleneck is a change you make on the work center, and it takes effect in the plan only when you re-run the schedule.

How to Check It Worked

After flagging a constraint, click Refresh now and confirm the tile names the station you expect. Then open the utilization report over a representative window and confirm the same station carries the bottleneck label and sits at the top of the rating list. If the report disagrees with the flag repeatedly across several windows, the flag is on the wrong machine.

Common Mistakes

• Leaving the tile on a dash. An unflagged plant has no agreed pace-setter, and the buffer logic has nothing to protect.
• Flagging several stations because they all look busy. One constraint, chosen deliberately, is the point.
• Moving the flag after one busy week. Confirm over a window that covers a normal product mix.
• Expecting the flag alone to change the plan. Constraint-anchored scheduling also needs the target start date, and a scheduling run.
• Reading the tile as a capacity number. It names a station. The utilization report supplies the hours, the rating, and the evidence.

See how constraints, capacity, and the plan stay in one system on the EDGEBIC product page.